Andover Brights quilt

I bought a packet of eight fat quarters of Andover Textured Solids shot cotton when I visited the Stitchin Post in Sisters this summer. As much as I love blues, I’m always drawn to these warm hues of pinks, purples, and peachy-oranges. The fat quarters have sat on my sewing table for months, waiting for inspiration. It’s funny how you have no idea what to make with a certain fabric, and then, all of a sudden, if you wait long enough and leave enough space for ideas to trickle in, you are inspired!

To make this quilt, I cut the fat quarters in 4.5″ x 7″ blocks (totaling 96 blocks). I laid them out 12 down x 8 across, and sewed them together in strips, with 80 white 7″ x 3.5″ blocks in between. Then I cut 2.5″ wide strips and pieced the rows together.

Unfortunately, my math wasn’t perfect, and it ended up longer than I had anticipated; I sewed 5.5″ wide strips in the vertical sides, to make the quilt 63″ wide (perfect for a twin-sized quilt), but even with only 2.5″ wide strips on the top and bottom, the quilt ended up 104″ long – almost 10″ too long on each side for a twin-sized quilt! However, I couldn’t bear to cut it down, so I figured that you could tuck the extra length over each end of the bed, or use the length to go over the pillows at the head of the bed.

For the back, I had two 2-yard pieces of shot cotton in some of the exact same colors, so I split and sewed those together for a middle panel, framed on either side by white cotton.

I wanted a quilting pattern that juxtaposed against the “squareness” of the quilt layout, so I used a straight-edge to draw sunburst lines from the center of the quilt – not too many, just enough to secure even the outside edges, where the sunburst lines were the widest. I was really happy with both how this quilting looked, and the fact that it didn’t take long at all. I finished it off with simple white cotton binding.

I think that the final product shows off the colors beautifully, although you do lose a little bit of the impact of the cool texture of shot cotton – I need to find other sewing projects (maybe clothes?) that really take advantage of this beautiful, soft fabric that has such a nice drape and sheen.